


He's off to pay his crime, he's got no time for mine

by Akegatacchi



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Kinda, Laurent and Auguste are Stars, M/M, Magic, Minor Character Death, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Nicaise (Captive Prince) Lives, Orlant Lives, Stars, Stars as Gods, mid gore, some gore, there are 3 deaths hence the warning but it's not lamen, wait it's 4 deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 14:54:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18054647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akegatacchi/pseuds/Akegatacchi
Summary: There was a legend upon Damen's family.It said his ancestor had been blessed by the gods, two gods, the most powerful of them all – the South Star and the North Star. It is said that the founder of his tribe, Amarilla, was such a beautiful, brave, fierce, strong women that the South Star loved her. But every legendary love story could only be as tragic as it was beautiful, and the god could not stay with her on earth, and left her to be loved by another man, mortal, able to grow old with her. But just before leaving, he blessed her offspring to be as great as she had been, her line to be long and always chiefs of their tribe.Amarilla had children, and her children had children, and the Ios tribe was born.(Damen is part of the Ios Riders, Auguste and Laurent are Stars, and Damen still kills Auguste but still finds Laurent).





	He's off to pay his crime, he's got no time for mine

**Author's Note:**

> Finally posting this fic after working on it for a loooong, loooooooooooong time (like, a whole year).  
> Title from Hasley - Coming down and the famous CP vid.  
> I have the bad little habits of playing with gore and deaths because I enjoy it in literature so if you don't like it, be warned (it's nothing too graphic)...  
> Also english is not my first language so if you spot any mistake please tell me!

There was a legend upon Damen's family.

It said his ancestor had been blessed by the gods, two gods, the most powerful of them all – the South Star and the North Star. It is said that the founder of his tribe, Amarilla, was such a beautiful, brave, fierce, strong women that the South Star loved her. But every legendary love story could only be as tragic as it was beautiful, and the god could not stay with her on earth, and left her to be loved by another man, mortal, able to grow old with her. But just before leaving, he blessed her offspring to be as great as she had been, her line to be long and always chiefs of their tribe.

 

Amarilla had children, and her children had children, and the Ios tribe was born.

 

The Ios tribe was both feared and respected across the ocean of the Akielos plains, blue and green until the horizon. Its riders were known beyond the Patran Wall, beyond the Vaskian Mountains, maybe even beyond the Forest of Acquitart that lead to the forbidden land of Vere. They knew how to ride a horse and to wield the sword before they knew how to walk – Damen was a child of the Green Ocean, born to be king of riders.

 

There was a time he did not believe in the legend.

 

*

 

Damen knelt in his hut, in front of him the little shrine he made himself.

His little treasure was but a wooden ring, no bigger than a plate, which he had polished for months after Marlas and upon which he had thoroughly carved a map of the stars – two bigger than any others: the two brothers, North Star and South Star. A living star and a dead one.

No one in the Ios tribe approved of gods and stars since centuries, but Damen had not enough of a lifetime to repent the crime he made. So, no louder than a whisper, he prayed.

“Look upon us, O North Star. May the ghost of the South Star hear me as well wherever he is. I call to you for a great wrong has fallen on my tribe. My father is sick. Illness started to spread on his right hand three year after Marlas – and for three years he could not hunt nor ride. Now, it spreads on his torso and dangerously close to his heart. My father is dying, North Star.”

The quiet admittance felt like too much and he paused to let the tumult of grief pacify itself.

“I know I do not have the right to ask help from you, to ask you which path is the right to take. But my brother says it is my doing, that I have angered the gods and they punish my family for it.” He did not say Jokaste agreed as well, making the betrayal even more bitter while clinging to Kastor’s arm. “I come to you because I feel like my only family left is a dying father. If it is true, if my father disease really is the Stars’ Curse, then I beg you, lead your wrath on-”

Someone interrupted by entering his hut without warning, but Damen knew who is was. Only two ever came in without announcing themselves: he doubted Jokaste will ever come again for a night of warmth. Nikandros waited until Damen was on his feet and facing him before saying carefully, “The stain reached his left collarbone.”

The Stars’ Curse was a rare and ancient disease, a myth spreading in a dark stain on the surface of the skin, leaving only rotten flesh under it – something told to frightening children to make them bath. Damen did not believe in its existence until six years ago. Six years ago, he did not believe in gods either. Now, his nights were haunted by the thought of it, and his father dying by their doing.

It was, also, incredibly fortunate that Kastor believed in stars only when he wanted to, and he wanted to blame Damen very much.

“I am leaving tonight, have my horse prepared,” said Damen.

Nikandros nodded and disappeared for a moment to carry out the order. When he came back, silent fell upon them. Damen busied himself preparing his possessions for the travel, and Nikandros finally gave in first, “Talk to me. I don’t like that you talk to your gods more than you do to me.”

Damen answered at once, “Stars. And they listen, Nik. You should trust in them.”

Nikandros frowned, “I don’t like whomever or whatever puts a man to his knees just because he wishes to talk to it. The stars are too far away for us to reach -”

Damen sighed, “You may as well give up. You told me so before.” but Nikandros has every right to know. He had told days ago the rest of the tribe that he was going to ride to Kingsmeet to pray even more for his father and try to save their chief. The truth was somewhere else.

“My oldest friend,” he said and put a heavy hand on Nikandros’ shoulders, “I will ride to Kingsmeet and take my father place.”

Nikandros’ reaction was violent, but no word nor act could have made Damen look back on his choice. So, they stood there, the brothers who were two and saying goodbye, preparing to be one only soon – a cruel irony, in a way, because at that instant, they reflected the Brothers Stars destiny.

 

At dawn, he was on his horse, his lion fur on his back. His brother came to put a hand on his horse’s neck, and said, loud enough for the whole tribe to hear, “You do right, brother. We can afford you not repenting for our father’s condition.”

To strangers he sounded proud and comforting, but Damen gritted his teeth. Kastor and Jokaste used to mock his faith until it was useful for them to believe. Nikandros came after him, gifting his future chief with a sword. Damen recognized it at once: it was his father’s – a reminder that he was still the rightful heir. Pallas came too, hours training together forging their friendship, and gave him food for his horse. Damen showed his gratitude with a nod and a smile. When they stepped back, he looked a last time to the camp that was his home, and to his people, knowing they’ll be gone to another plain by the time he returned. If he returned.

Without looking back, he rode.

 

*

 

Kingsmeet was a temple on the top of a cliff, high above the Green Ocean. Under the sunlight, the white of its stones almost blinded Damen. He had a memory like a dream, of a little boy finally free to ride wherever he wanted alone and rode so much he ended here, posting himself at the feet of a fluted column and looking up, and up, _and up._

It had felt like a place from old times back then, beautiful but abandoned; now, climbing up the stairs to the temple, it felt like he was soiling it with his mere presence.

It was also a wonder, to be here where all Akielos tribes came together to built in stone. It was a request from Amarilla in her last days, after the last tribes pledged allegiance to her. She wanted a place for her stars to come back to.

Kingsmeet could not look any less built by men than now, aged by centuries – it looked like nature itself had built it, or like the house of gods landed on earth.

 

Damen took a first step inside.

It resonated in the Great Hall of Chiefs – and it sounded like a single tear dropping on the immaculate ground, the tear of a god saddened by the emptiness of a place meant to reunite goddess and mankind.

The walls and t columns were as white inside as it were outside, the floor a complex mosaic of gold, blue and red. Disposed all around the hall were statues of each chief of the Ios Tribe; Amarilla, at the back, the tallest of them all. They were Damen's ancestors.

Soon, his father would be immortalized here too.

He traversed, getting around Amarilla' statue and entered the hidden part of the temple. It was a complicated layout of alcoves, rooms and chapels made for more intimate prayers, and he knelt in front of the biggest alcove, looking up to the painted map of the night sky. Like this, the South Star was at eyes level. He noted with surprise it was the only spot of red. He wondered who – or what – colored it. Then, his gaze traveled up to the North Star, and he began his summoning:

“Behold me at your feet, O North Star, behold the most wretched of creatures, for I have wronged you in the worst way. I come to you, penitent and humbled, ready for your right punishment to fell upon me. I come to take my father's place, for no father shall pay for his son' sins and action. Take mercy on him, South Star, be as ruthless as you have to be on me for men to learn.”

The sound of water being rippling broke his focus and he startled as the dot of the North Star glowed, weakly and jerkily. Heart beating hard, he got up and followed the sound of water.

Further inside was a room which opened toward the Green Ocean through a loggia, a basin of translucent water in the middle. A young man was soaking his feet in it. He was younger than Damen, beautiful, blond, fair skin under white chiton and Damen could only stare at him.

 

A ghost of the past.

 

*

 

Six years ago, he was at Marlas, a small but rich land just before the Forest of Acquitart.

 

He had gone, with his sword and lion furs, under his father Theodomes’ order to conquer. Most of the warriors of the Ios Tribe mounted with him, and some of the bravest from other tribes rejoined on the way to north. He had been galvanised and proud, and arrived with the hope of having his name spoken in the tales told to children, or around the fire of soldiers in stories spurring men to another round of wine. He knew of the strength of the Vaskian women, the cunning ways of Patran merchants’ minds and the feats of the greatest conqueror of the Ios tribe, his father, and dreamt to be remembered at his side.

He had yet to meet a Veretians, but knew what to expect. His father had passed on to him his distrust and hate for them, their legends and gods; a nation of manipulative men and women born with a mind for deceive, ruled by a lost line of kings who made their subjects think of them as divine stars for centuries. Nobody in the Ios tribe had believed in gods for a very long time, even when the legend of Amarilla told them otherwise. A child’s tale. It was time to put an end to it, to trespass into the forbidden land of Vere, to conquer it and show to the world what they really were – such was the command of the Ios Tribe Chief, and so went his soldiers.

 _We are too far away to touch the stars,_ Nikandros always said, _we_ _may as well forget them._

 

Damen had believed in his father’s words, and had made them law.

But faith was patient. It waited until Damen was twenty. And when it came, it was with violence.

 

The trees of Acquitart were as tall as hills, an impassable wall signalling the end of the Green Ocean, trying to reach the high sun. He did not look up. No wind could be felt, no rustling of leaves heard. Damen posted himself in front of it, an army at his back, his brother in blood Kastor at his right and his brother in arms Nikandros at his left, and did not feel fear. He was been conscious of the novelty of the situation; it was his first war – it wouldn’t be the last.

He was the first one to put feet on the ground, listening the faint sound of people whistling coming from the odd wood, louder and louder. His own men, whose horses became restless, answered by banging on their shields with their swords. Loudly.

When the first warriors came out of the wood, Damen knew them at once. He used to fall asleep listening to tales about them. Men and women came out slowly, dressed in laced blue silk as solid as an armour, paint on their faces. Two blue lines under the eyes, one yellow star on the forehead. They were from every tribes across the world, and chose to live in the forest, the closest known place to the gods.

Veretians.

 

He screamed their war cry, and war took over the land.

The battle was ruthless, he was to remember years after the feeling of stepping on corpses and the scent of blood. Each time he caught side of Nikandros, he had to force down the relief that took over his heart. He killed, and killed and killed – some of them old, some of them young. He forbade himself of thinking about how many sons he killed on this day, how many mothers.

In the middle of the battle, a man had appeared.

Damen blinked, and suddenly, he was here, unaffected by the blood and dirt on the battlefield, his skin fair, his hair golden, his eyes blue. He stood straight, unarmed, unprotected, a little older than Damen. Calmly, he spoke, “Damianos, stop this madness.”

The voice was clear, and Damen heard him as if he was speaking directly into his ears. He almost ordered his men to stop, and bit his tongue. There was a strength in this man that forced obedience. The man stepped forward, “Greed won't solve anything, Damianos. It'll just cause blood and hate.”

Riders threw curious looks to their chief 'son without intervening, and Damen faced him bravely for the sake of his men. “Who are you?” he asked.

The man stopped, and simply, said, “Auguste.”

He raised his sword again, spitted on the ground and growled, “This is not greed. This is my father's quest to stop centuries of lies.”

“There are no lies here. Stop the war and let the men and women live.” Unnerving.

“No. Your gods don't exist. It is a lie to reduce people to veneration and slavery! My father will free this land!”

“Does this look like slavery to you?”

Damen attacked. Out of nowhere, Auguste materialized and lifted his own sword to counter. Damen fought and fought and fought – but his adversary stayed untouched, countering without attacking, without even breaking a sweat. Then, by one fluid and fast move of his arm, Auguste disarmed him and sent him to the ground. Damen's collarbone bleed.

He was twenty, and it was the first time in two years someone vanquished him. Fear was a cunning and unstoppable emotion that crept into his bones.

“Gods do not exist, Damianos? You are wrong. They do,” Auguste said.

Damen felt the change before he saw it happening. Auguste’s eyes went darker, the dark blue of the night, with stars dancing in it. His hair glowed like the sun, the silk of his clothes rippling like waves – the surface of his skin vibrated like his inside was tall, too tall to be contained. His voice was a thunder, “You are standing before one.”

Crushed and powerless, Damen failed to stand up. Fear was digging into his bones, threatening to break them, and awe came next, flooding his whole being. He did not know which of the two made his body tremble like this.

Stars were real.

 

Auguste returned to his human form. Damen's mind took refuge in the only thing he knew best: the god made himself human – human could die. _Damen could kill him._

The bow was more powerful that anything Damen thought he was able to strike, faster too, and the god did not react in time. Auguste's head fell next to his feet. Another man would have mocked the god, unable to stand against a mere mortal, but Damen felt the blood spurt on his face, hot, new, thick. But when he tried to wipe it with his hand, it was black. Everything stopped. His train of thoughts stopped, his body stopped, the wind stopped, the battle stopped, the world stopped.

Stars were real. He killed one of them.

 

And suddenly he was floating in the emptiness of space.

A star was faltering.

Damen knew it at once.

The South Star stopped faltering and fell – Damen fell with it, down and down, toward the earth until he reached his body. He stared, incredulous, as the star fell into Auguste's corpse and in a burst of lighting, disappeared with it. The world trembled for a few seconds, the stars realigned themselves. And everything restarted.

Half of the men had fallen to their knees with the earthquake and Damen could not look away from the burnt grass which has taken the place the South Star used to be. Vertigo, fear and horror crashed together into him and he bended to vomit. Veretians screamed and screamed, fleeing toward the forest to take shelter. Akielons sang in victory.

A hand clasped his shoulder firmly. The warm voice of Nikandros, full of pride, said “What are you doing, Damen? We won. Marlas is ours.”

In none language Damen could explain to his friend what had happened to him, describe the tempest of emotion that conquered the place were Damen's heart was supposed to be. Faith had come for him. Stars were real, it should be impossible, but they could give to a mortal the power to kill them and Damen did. Damen killed the South Star. He settled for, “Go back without me.”

Nikandros gave him a curious glance.

“I need to pray.”

 

*

 

“Did you know that stars found kneeling distasteful?” asked the young man, moving his feet in the water.

 

Damen, still astonished by the apparition, did not answer. There was something familiar with the stranger, and yet, he had never met him before. It was in the grace with which he moved, as if he was careful to not disturb but to blend with his environment, but it seemed effortless coming from him. He stood up and made his way toward the loggia, where he sat and wiped his feet with a cloth he found there. Damen was not sure the cloth was there before.

Wisteria branches climbed up on this side of the temple, and some made bashfully their way inside. The delicate purple flowers imperceptibly turned towards the young man’s head, and braided themselves with blond hair. The world was not made for such beauty.

“Stars don’t usually need to reduce someone into kneeling to feel powerful. I suppose, in a sense, that it is fitting for you humans,” said the young man, who was the North Star.

 

Damen gulped, heart still beating hard, and forced the words out of his mouth, “Why are you here, O North Star?”

“You called for me,” was the simple answer.

Damen almost knelt again, but decided against mid-motion. The act lit a fire in the god's eyes, and it was enough to make Damen stumble. The vertigo he felt meeting Auguste was back, and the North Star had yet to show him his true form.

“You wish to repent for my brother's death.”

It was not a question and yet, Damen answered, “Yes”.

“Then go back in time, and undo what you've done,” said the North Star.

“I can't do that, O North Star.”

“So why do you insist on forgiveness at each of those pathetic prayers of yours?”

The silence filled every dark corners of the temple – Damen felt it in between them both, and in every of his bones. He looked – focused, blinded – but the only things that did not look human on the North Star were his beauty, and his eyes. His beauty – unreal, pale, delicate. His eyes – fierce, burning, dancing with something bigger. It was the only give-away of his divinity.

“You wish to repent. Very well. I can do something about it.”

The cloth fell on the ground, barely making any sound as he moved closer to Damen, his steps light and silent. He raised his hand and brought it closer to Damen’s face. For a moment he thought he was going to be touched by a star, and the next he felt the skin of his back being torn open.

The pain came a second after. He screamed and fell. The sound of his skin torn open was nearly enough to make him scream again. The next wave of pain came fast and hard, barely letting him register what was happening – a whipping without a whip, the only weapon a resentful god staring down at him.

The pain happened with an intensity he had never experimented before, at a regular rhythm that took his breath away, and his skin.

The North Star’s eyes never left his crumpling form, and he felt foolish to ever thought his prayers could match the rage of a god.

With this last thought, he let his consciousness split away.

 

*

 

When he finally woke up again, it was with the feeling of a cold hand on the warmth of his ruined back. “I should let you die. You took Auguste away from me.”

The North Star traced the outline of one laceration, slowly, leaving in its trace the sensation of salt ravishing an open wound. Damen started trembling – because of the pain, because of the fury in the North Star’s voice.

And then it was gone, the beautiful voice cleared of all emotions, smooth and even, «Yet, you are Amarilla’s blood”.

But then, the hand travelled on his back, and with it, his wounds healed. It was a strange feeling, the skin and blood slowly going back to where they were ripped off, closing without any hints of pain. It was a relief – it felt like a rebirth.

When the smooth cold hand left his back, no wound remained. Carefully, he went up to his feet, gathering his chiton at the same time. There was still blood on it. Under his feet on the floor too, there was blood. He started to cover his nudity when a red hand came up to stop his and took the chiton from him. The blood on the North Star’s hand was his.

The North Star calmly made his way to the basin and soaked up the chiton in it, the water reddening and then clearing. When Damen was given back his chiton, it was white again.

 

Damen wanted to hate him – he could not bring himself to. It was relief and not hate that occupied his heart. And the North Star’s anger and grief felt so strangely human, it was almost like he was an equal, but Damen could not really wrap his head around it.

The North Star said, “I should torture you. I should give you the slowest of death.”

And Damen could only answer, “Can stars feel human emotions?”

The North Star stared at him evenly, and declared, “I don’t have time for you. Get out.”

He turned his back, waiting for Damianos to leave. One wisteria flower, bold and curious, bloomed towards him and the god extended a hand to feel the petal on his fingertips.

And Damen looked at the fair hair falling on a delicate nape. Anger did nothing to reduce his beauty, cruelty did nothing to the fierce way he seemed to stand.

The star itself was standing here, Damen had looked at him and saw something greater than life itself. Everything felt futile then – what would prayers bring more to him now?

“Where do you have to go, that you were unable to go before?”

The North Star sent him a glare, and the flower in his hand perished. Damen knew, by the old women of his tribe still retailing stories, that a prayer was like a string: if a god took the end of it, he could not go until the human creating it decided so, until every requests and questions were answered. Damen’s prayers had been strong for years, and he knew it. For as long as he was asking, the North Star could not free himself from it.

He really wondered why the North Star did pull on that string.

“The Veretians,” said the North Star, “I have to go to them.”

“How do you find yourself here and not with them, then?”

“I could not go.”

“Why?”

The North Star took a step back, but it was not anger in his eyes, it was something akin to lassitude.

“Another star made sure I could not.”

Damen found himself dismayed by such an answer, “I thought you were the most powerful of them all?”

And it was the North Star’s turn to look confused, if the raised eyebrow was such an emotion, “No. Every star is equivalent in powers. It is a matter of how much we are willing to do for humans, and how much humans pray for us.”

Stars grew powerful if humans prayed for them. Damen wondered if there were any Veretians left praying for the North Star any more, and who was the god they prayed for now, that forbade a spirit such as the one standing in front of him to descend. He had never cared for Veretians until now. But seeing a star looking so eager to go to them that he would forgot his hatred for him prickled his curiosity.

 

Hate, eagerness, he thought. So human, he thought – and this time, it resonates with his soul.

 

“I won’t keep you there, O North Star. You have somewhere to go.”

The North Star’ stare was impenetrable, and he said, quietly, almost reluctantly, “Thank you, Damianos of Akielos. You truly have the blood of Amarilla.”

Damen could only smile, and guided him out. He watched the star put a light hand on the feet of Amarilla’s statue – a salutation to an old friend.

Unable to know why, he said, “My father almost had his statue put here to.”

A question in his eyes, the North Star asked, “Why has he not?”

It was the beginning of a riot inside Damen’s heart, “Was it not you that put the Stars’ Curse on him to punish him for my crime?”

“I would not punish a father for his son’ sins.”

The riot was a tempest. It was the devastating revelation of a betrayal, the grieving resignation of a dying father, the helplessness of a fool having been deceived.

A body moved closer, and he was brought back by the North Star voice, “Damianos?”

He told him. To Auguste’s death to his father’s illness, his prayer and his brother’s words. The North Star listened to him with the calm of somebody listening to humans’ grievance for millennia and then said, “How could you not hate me then? In your mind, I put illness on your father, and wounds on your back.”

“Because I did this to you, I took your brother away from you. There is nothing I can do to make it right. Stars do not have to be fair.”

“Everyone has to be fair. You paid the price for it already.”

“There is not enough time in a lifetime to grief for someone we love, and you have an eternity of it. An eternity of mourning. I gave you that, O North Star. What price would be enough?”

There was another silence, and the pale hand was back on his arm again, barely a weight, shy; Damen marvelled at the contrast again his darker skin. And the star said, “I hated you for years. I hated even more that you were Amarilla’s blood. I have longed to kill and hurt you as well. It felt very human, and I hated you for that as well. But now I just want my brother back.”

Something moved inside Damen, and he answered in a whisper, “Mine is not dead, yet I can’t have him back.”

The parallel was almost laughable, if it was not brought by something so painful. The North Star added nothing, and headed out.

 

Next to Damen’s mount was a young mare – so beautiful and sudden she looked like an apparition. It was, without a doubt, the mount of the North Star. Her coat was as white as the skin of the star, her mane falling like silk, and her eyes as dark as the night sky.

The North Star came gingerly next to her, and put delicately his hand on her, nuzzling her mane.

“Were you waiting for someone, Damianos of Akielos?”

With some difficulties, he tore his gaze away and looked at the feet of the hill. Two riders were coming to them and Damen knew them at once. He would know them in death. He smiled, without noticing.

“No,” he said, “but they are friends of mine.”

Soon, the two riders were next to them and dismounted. Nikandros and Pallas seemed relieved to see him, and with a curious glance to the North Star, greeted him with the niceties reserved to a chief, which Damen dismissed by a hand gesture to embrace his friends.

“Whom would you be, traveller?” It was Pallas who finally surrendered to temptation.

With a mirth that surprised even him, Damen answered, “The North Star”.

Nikandros raised an eyebrow, and, placid, said “Really now. I suppose you have made peace with the stars too?”

It was the North Star who came at his defence, unexceptionally fierce, “Yes. I know when to acknowledge candour and honour when I see it.”

Nikandros laughed and laughed, and clasped the North Star’s shoulder and said, “It’s alright, young traveller, you do not need to play along with Damen.”

The North Star glared, and freed himself, “Do not touch me, human.”

“Where did you find this one, Damen? Did you feel too cold in the nights of your journey?”

Damen felt the fear before the North Star even reacted, for the god’s face was now a thin smile, barely there, the edge of a knife. “I suppose it would be quite simple to change your mind, rider.”

And, before his oldest friend could even respond, the North Star grew and grew, until he looked down on them. His eyes were two black holes, his skin the colour of a full moon and his hair grew and changed – it was like a galaxy, cluster of stars, planets and cosmic dust that seemed to envelop everything around them. They felt his power like they would have felt an earthquake and Damen knew his friends must felt like he did upon meeting Auguste – every object changing forms, the air changing taste, the world rearranging himself around the truth.

The gods were real and one of them was standing before them.

Nikandros paled and fell on his knees; Pallas swayed and threw up. The North Star changed back and came closer to pass a cold hand on their forehead. Their breath cleared, they got up, hesitant and upset. The next second, their eyes were sure, and their minds reconciled with the truth; all doubts left at the door. Such was the power of a star.

“Why did you come, friends?” asked Damen.

Pallas seemed troubled. Nikandros, as sturdy as a rock, said “I am afraid I have terrible news. Your father is dead.”

Damen let the grief conquer his heart for a mere moment of weakness before putting himself together. He felt the incongruous presence of the North Star shifting closer, but the god had yet to take to step closer: his tortured head acknowledged the imminent essence, and took solace from it. Nikandros continued, “Kastor took his place. He says you allied yourself with Veretians to kill him.”

“Quiet. I will hear no more.”

“You must. Something else came up.”

“What can possibly worsen the situation? Do speak.”

“Jokaste is pregnant with your brother.”

Fury used to be a stranger in Damen heart – it now felt like an old friend, coming back into his life to never leave. Jokaste was but a blurry small place at the edge of his mind, his brother an enormous stain in the middle. Betrayal was a thousand of thorns picked in his chest, the taste of an old medicine leaving his mind clear and his mouth bitter.

“Is there a stranger advising your new chief?”

The question on the North Star lips surprised the three of them. Nikandros answered, “Yes. He came right after Damen left, from the South, on a strange ship. Kastor welcomed him as an old master.”

The North Star’s mouth was a thin line and Damianos knew at once the stranger meant arm to his people. He asked, “Whom is he?”

“The star who forbade me of returning to the Veretians. If he has set his mind on your tribe, I am afraid you do not have much time left to save it.”

“Why?”

“Is your tribe large, horse riders?”

“The largest and strongest of the Akielon Plains, O North Star. And our chief rules them all,” Pallas.

“Then, you must go at once.”

Damianos stepped closer to the star, eager to bask into his source of power again. He was afraid for his people. “Why? Explain to us, O North Star, whom this stranger is, that he could outdraw you like this?”

“He calls himself the Regent, no star remembers his first name. When the South Star died, he saw the chance to seek out the Veretians. I -” he stopped, power running under his skin by act of his emotions, his face the perfect facade of calm, and added after a second - “I isolated myself for some years. I grieved. And made the mistake of trusting him to take care of my humans in the meantime. He took their will away, making them slaves to prayers until death took them. Those prayers gave him powers, and me weakness.”

“He wants to do the same to our tribe.”

The horror in Nikandros’ voice was matched by the one of Pallas’ face when the North Star nodded.

“How do we vanquish him?”

The North Star turned to look at Damianos, and said, “You can not. You are sheer mortals.”

Nikandros frowned but Pallas seemed to hear something different, his body shifting, his face softened by a startling realisation. He looked at Damen who nodded, and saw Pallas looking at the North Star in a different light, taking the way he was apologizing without saying it, as if he knew the pain of losing someone – and the North Star did.

There was a dignity with which he was facing the truth of adversity, standing straight and still even when he could not do anything. Damen wondered if he faced the loss of Veretians that way, and marvelled on the strength it reflected.

“But you can.”

The North Star deflected his attention from Nikandros’ affront. A lesser man would have falter, but Damen repeated, “But you can, O North Star. Beat him.”

There was a flash of something enthralling and dangerous in the god’s eyes, and he said, “Not without the Veretians. My powers down here can not match the ones I have up there without their prayers.”

“We can pray for you,” interjected Pallas, flirtatious.

“It does not work like that, rider. It has to be meaningful.”

“What about,” Damen stopped at the look Nikandros was sending him, like he knew too well what his friend was about to propose, the sheer audacity of it, but Damen felt like it was the right thing to do and said, “What if we go with you and free them? Will you be willing to help us, then?”

The god was impenetrable, as if no one ever proposed to help him before, and, slowly, almost unsure, said, “I can not ask that from you. No one can change heart so quick they’d be fit to help those they fought for centuries.”

Pallas got closer, “But they need you. And you need them.”

Nikandros nodded, his reluctance gone, “I can see no better reason to help one whose wish is to find his people.”

The North Star looked so young then, his eyes slightly widened, his cheek the palest of pinks; like they just held the world in their hands and offer it to him – the exact contrary of what truly was. Damen grinned in the face of the god’s bewilderment, and wanted to say to him, _look at my tribe, look at how we are,_ but said: “Let’s go then, O North Star.”

He turned towards his mount, strong and beautiful under the blue sky, when he heard, “Laurent.”

They looked at him, the one between stars and humans, not quite processing what they were just given, as empowering and humbling it was.

A new light, less dangerous and fiercer was in the North Star’s eyes, and he said again, “You can call me Laurent.”

 

Damen felt a new strength in him, and, looking to the Green Ocean he grew up in, said, “Let’s ride, Laurent. North.”

 

*

 

Riding with Laurent was a pleasant experience. He was a fine rider, and he loved horses as much as the Ios riders, which helped Damen’s companions to warm up to him. Most of the time, they forgot he was goddess and then, he made a flower bloom in passing, or stood looking at the sky for hours instead of sleeping. He had never eaten, drink nor sleep with them.

But he helped hunting, mounting the camp, such human chores he did not seem to mind – on the contrary, he seemed to take great joy in the most trivial task.

There were moments where Damen had to stop, to remind himself that in spite of the late conversations, early sparring sessions, Laurent was not one of them.

There was a star admits the humans.

But Laurent was somehow touching parts of Damen he never knew were closed doors, opening them one by one, and shockingly, opening some of his in return.

 

One evening they sat in silence for a while under the tent of furs, content in eating the hunted meat after a long day of riding. The tent was large enough for the four of them to fit; fire still crackling in the middle, grass under their feet warming. Damen felt as if they were the warriors on a quest to catch the sun, the ones Kastor used to tell him about, and his heart flooded with something contradictory, as everytime he thought about his brother. He pushed the thought away.

Soon enough, the rain started to fall, just as Laurent predicted when he intimated to stop in the late afternoon – humidity changed the scent of furs, and with it, the atmosphere. Drops made something of a melody out of their regular rythm, and Damen leaned back, closing his eyes. Rain was rare in Ios, a small pleasure in which he had always found serenity.

Pallas voice broke the peaceful silence with a gentle, “Laurent?”

All eyes were on him, but Laurent did not reply. Slowly, he stepped out of the hut and into the rain. Damen stood and moved closer: there were something akin to wonder in Laurent’s eyes, in his relaxed features and the way he opened his palms toward the sky, as if receiving a gift from it. It took only a few seconds for him to be soaked, eyelash fluttering, lips slightly blue, hair heavier and darker. His skin seemed even more delicate and white; making a pearl out of his face.

“Is something wrong?” asked Damen, coming to stand beside him under the rain.

“I did not feel the rain since the last time I came on Earth,” answered Laurent.

Behind them, Nikandros and Pallas returned to their food, judging the justification not worth worrying. Damen looked around, wondering how it must feel like. He retired his hand from where it was stopping the furs from falling back, giving them an illusion of intimacy he hopelessly longed for. His eyes stopped on a leaf upon which the drops fell heavily, and he wondered whereas they shared the delectation of the newly bright colours of the green nature. “When was it?”, he asked instead.

“Amarilla.”

Damen’s curiosity roused at the name and without thinking, he asked, “Tell me about her.”

Laurent remained silent for minutes, looking at him through wet lashes – searching for the right thing to say, probably. Finally, he settled on, “Did you know why lions are the symbol of your tribe?”

Damen did not. And suddenly, it seemed strange for horsemen of Ios living in Akielos; lions were more common in Patras. Laurent understood his absence of answer and explained, “Amarilla’s birthday were close. Neither Auguste nor I knew what to give her. She was already gifted, so we asked her what she wanted.” He let his hands fall back alongside his body, and turned his gaze ahead of him. “It is lonely, the summit. She was not married yet and her road companions were not humans. She could have asked for a husband or a wife, but she always knew that no human could ever compare to what she felt for my brother. She asked for a companion close to her in spirit and soul. We gave her a lion.”

Damen let the information sink in and once it was done, bewildered, he blurted, “You’re joking, right?”

Laurent gave him a look and the side of his mouth perked a little. Damen’s laughter came out, breathless and full.

 

The rain poured harder, and Laurent stayed all night under it.

 

*

 

“I never noticed the Acquitart forest was so beautiful,” said Damen once he dismounted.

The journey has been four months long; putting a foot on earth was almost an oddity.

Damen used to remember only the blood and cold from the North. But the forest which stood before him was tempestuous, tall trees conquering the sky, their wood dark, the leaves and grass a bright green. Various wildlife noises were singing under the pale sun of a cold weather, everything calm and purified, less dangerous than what war had let them think.

Laurent dismounted next to him, and with a glimpse of malice, said “I planted those trees.”

Or maybe, the forest was magic, planted by the hand of a star, and changed with the times.

“What did you not do, that is the question,” Damen said as he took the reigns of both their horses to tie them to a tree, and then, indulging the god because he knew he had not taken pleasure in his own accomplishments for a long time, asked “When was it?”

Laurent lost his malice when he turned back his eyes to the trees, “When your tribe started conquering and persecuted the Veretians. The wood is almost as big as a region.”

“Is there a lot of Veretians in it?”, asked Pallas.

“Not anymore.”

“And the land behind it, Vere? Does it exist?”

“It does. But it’s not the land of stars; it belongs to the Veretians, where ever they come from. The legend was a way to protect it. Acquitart acts as a barrier, only those who come with no intentions of trouble can cross it.”

“Even if they don’t believe in stars?”

“Even if they don’t believe in stars.”

Nikandros stepped closer, and said, in a low tone, “You really care for them.”

Laurent turned to him, understanding between them, and answered, “They are my people. I am nothing without them.”

 

Laurent entered the forest without hesitation, but Pallas seemed a little unnerved, “What happen if the forest rejects us?”

“Do you come here to harm?” asked the North Star, unforgiving.

“No,” said Pallas, and ever the brave warrior, stepped into the wild.

They breathed a sigh of relief when nothing happened upon their entry, but Laurent was already moving forward. Everything they had heard outside the trees, the wildlife, the rustling of leaves, was multiplied here, but in a song so harmonious it put their hearts at ease at once. Laurent walked as if he knew where he was going, and they followed him without doubting – and their trust in Laurent, the song of the forest, the pale light streaming through foliage made them forgetful and surprised when an arrow lodged itself right in front of their feet.

Up in the branches, five Veretians had their arrows pointed to them. Nikandros and Pallas made a gesture to their swords, but Laurent stopped them with a gesture of his own. Damen looked at him, but the star looked at their attackers one by one, recognition softening his features.

A man came down, his hair blond darker than Laurent’s, his face marked by time and battles but still relatively young, with the distinctive paint of the Veretians, and asked, “How did you enter, barbarians? What trick did you use?”

“None,” answered Damen, “We came -”

“Liar!”, someone screamed from above.

Damen frowned but said nothing. The man took a menacing step toward them, switching his bow for a sword, “Go back and never cross the forest again. Vere will no be conquered today.”

Damen couldn’t help saying, “You already have a conqueror of your own, a star drinking your will and leaving you without anything.”

“How do you know that? Did he send you here?”

“No,” and because they would never believe him otherwise, Damen took out his sword and in the ancient gesture of peace and treaty of the Ios tribe, threw it at his feet. The man seemed taken aback, even more so two other swords hit the ground behind Damen.

“I guided them,” said a voice who was no longer Laurent, but the North Star.

The man looked at him, and realization deformed his features. He fell on his knees, head toward the ground, and the four others came down, kneeling beside him. “Welcome to Acquitart, O North Star.”

“Please, never kneel to me again,” came the answer, and it was Laurent again.

Damen saw Nikandros coming to accept him fully with those precise chosen words. Faith was a good look on him, making stand prouder, straightening his shoulders, brightening his eyes.

The Veretians stood, and Laurent put a hand on the blond man’s cheek, “It’s good to see you, Jord.”

Jord smiled, reverent. The four other stepped closer and Laurent greeted them with their names too: the tall man with an ox face was Orlant, the one with what seemed an eternal smirk was Lazar, and the younger ones, Huet and Rochert. It was astonishing, to acknowledge the fact that stars could and did listen to each prayer, to the point where they feel like they knew intimately the humans calling to them. Nikandros smiled at the display of familiarity.

 

That evening, they sat around the fire in the Veretian camp in the forest.

Veretians had welcomed them with reserve and mistrust, but opened their eyes and heart in marvelled surprise at the sight of the North Star. Laurent seemed closer to the five men who had found them, and a mere question had informed Damen they were of the most fervent believers. The star busied himself talking with the children, less reserved than their parents to approach him.

“Do all the Veretians live in the Acquitart forest?”, asked Nikandros to the one sitting the closer to him, which was Orlant.

“Those of us who are free from the brainwashing,” he answered before taking a bite of the meat, “We are not many left.”

“I don’t think I could bear it, leaving between these trees. There is not a lot of space to ride,” said Pallas.

Lazar took a sip of his goblet and an appreciative glance at him, before saying, “The forest is nothing. At least we are free.”

A silence answered his declaration. Damen took another sip of wine, and searched for Laurent. He was still talking with the children, having knelt to be at their eye level.

“How come the North Star descended for you?” asked Jord.

“I prayed for him,” said Damen, simply.

“I pray for him, too.”

“He told me another star, the Regent, made sure he could not come for you. I am not sure how it works, but he was waiting for someone else to call him.”

“And it was you. An Akielon.”

“Some Akielons still believe in gods. Very few, but they exist. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“I reckon killing one of them forced you to believe in their existence, Damianos of Akielos.”

Damen admired Jord’s loyalty, but what happened between the North Star and him made them almost equals, something no Veretians ever considered, and suddenly he was saddened for him.

“Even so, it’s a rare sight, down here. The North Star descending,” said Lazar, and Damen was glad of the diversion.

Rochert added, “The South Star used to get down more, fighting and drinking with us. The North was more reserved, but I remember him from when I was a kid.”

Orlant snorted, “That was not a long time ago.”

But Huet said dreamily, “The South Star is the biggest, the closest to the men, but the North Star is always guiding us from afar.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Jord and they all drank, even the Ios riders.

“But I am here now, am I not?” said a voice behind them, and Laurent sat between Jord and Damen, “So let me drink with you too.”

Lazar and Orlant laughed a little at the face of bewilderment of Rochert and Huet, and Jord poured a cup for him obediently. Laurent sipped and made a face, “Still taste like swill.”

This time, everyone laughed.

 

Damen woke up startled in the middle of the night, from his place next to the fire. Veretians slept in trees, but Damen and his friends, less used to the cold weather of Vere, had gathered around the fire. Laurent had laid next to Damen, for a quiet conversation under the moving branches of the Acquitard forest about immortality and gods and humans and everything in between. Damen had told him some of his most precious memories, and Laurent had talked about a time when tribes had yet to born.

“To the caves, hurry!” screamed Huet, overstepping them.

Veretians were lifting camps, gathering supplies and food. Wind attacked trees violently, snow swirling between them, their breath visible when they talked. The cold was the worst part of it, creeping up their bones, whipping their faces, settling in their core, making their limbs tremble, their breath hurt, and every action difficult to accomplish. Snow fell with such violence that they could feel it on their skin.

“What is it?” asked Pallas, still half-asleep.

Laurent looked up, and said, “A snow tempest. You have to find shelter.”

“How can it come so fast on us?”

“Vere always had been an unfair land, but this is,” Laurent stopped and caught a flake in his hand. His eyes were shining with anger when he said, “It’s the Regent, he helped it. He must know I am here.”

They finished lifting the camp as fast as they could, but the tempest was already on them, and walking was a trial. They walked around an hour before finding the caves, getting lost in the cloud of snow again and again, their sight obstructed by night and snow getting in their eyes. When they finally reached their shelters, some of them were lost to the whimsical and ruthless winter fury. They would have to go back for their bodies when the sky cleared again.

Elders and children pressed inside the cave, holding each other tight, powerless and scared; others made a line to get the supplies inside; some tried to cut branches to make barriers. Urgency came with despair as trees started to fall, wind unforgiving. Jord swore loudly when Rochert’s lips started to turn blue.

“What do we do?” shouted Orlant to him, “It was never this bad before.”

Jord looked around. Despair increased, clearing only when a white hand entered his vision field, a gesture to stand back. Laurent then turned his back to him and said, “Go inside, and stay there.”

He marched into the snow, a pale figure without any coat under the violence of nature, almost blurring into it. Wind was waking his hair fly up, snow gathering on him. He kept on walking, difficultly. When he finally stopped, he did not look like a star, but merely like a human at the mercy of the snow tempest. He lifted both of his hands and closed his eyes, focusing on something mortals couldn’t see. They looked at each other, perplex and lost, but the star didn’t move. His fingers clenched up more and more; the shake began there, at the tip of his fingers, before spreading to his whole body. It was not the result of the cold, but of effort. It was Pallas that said, in a bewildered whisper, “Look, the snow!”

The tempest, the snow, the wind, all of it, even the cold, started swirling between Laurent’s hands. His forehead sweated under the effort, all his body tense, but the tempest was gathering into a orb between two hands, disappearing at the divine resolve.

Damen was the first one to regain his wits, and shouted, “Barricade the cave!”

They all hurried to do so, and with a last glance to the god affronting the nature alone, Damen went too.

 

A few minutes later, they were all pressed together by small groups around fires, safe inside the rocks, and children has finally stopped crying to go to sleep. Few were still shaking, and lots were fighting to urge to come out to see what the North Star’s whereabouts were. Wind was still blowing, muffled by their shelter walls, and they no longer feared they would fall. Pallas asked, something unknowable in his voice, “Did you know he could...do that?”

Lazar came closer to him, putting an arm around the shaking figure of the young warrior, “Did I know he was able to calm a storm with his bare hands?”

Pallas made a small breathy laugh, and closing his eyes to find sleep again, whispered, “It makes me feel like everything is possible.”

Damen smiled in the vague, his eyes on the dark rocks and his mind on a pale figure.

 

*

 

Arles probably once was the magnificent capital of a great kingdom – even now its ruins still held the ghost of it.

The city climbed high on an isolated mount, surrounded by the vestige of great fortifications, and the destroyed houses of the people; and, at the top, the ruin of a castle big enough for a king and all his court, its coloured marbles shinning under the parsimonious winter sun. They started climbing, the Veretians guiding them. The streets were numerous and built in such complicated paths it looked a labyrinth. Damen took the time to observe and admire. What was left of the houses were pieces of walls discretely craved by complicated arabesques, the game rich in symmetry and repetition. It was unlike anything he had seen before, and, for him, as unnecessary overcharged as oddly charming.

Pallas stopped in front of him and following his gaze, Damen saw the abandoned and rotting wood horse. “Where did they go?” asked Pallas.

“Dead, slaves, runaways in other countries,” answered Lazar.

“It’s like this city has been given up by the gods,” Pallas sounded truly saddened.

Jord gave him a strange glance, and then, looking at Damen: “No, you killed one of them and made the other leave.”

“Enough”, thundered the North Star without looking back, “He paid the price for it already.”

 

The gate of the palace was surprisingly in wood, now eaten by insects, craved to show a map of the sky, stars with eight branches in different sizes sprinkled on it. What was once the gardens around it was frozen to the roots, a sad picture of desolation and winter desert. Laurent stepped inside, passing his hand lightly on the door, a reflection of the salute he had given Amarilla at Kingsmeet. They all followed him down the corridors until they reached the centre of the castle, the Great Hall with his throne.

The vaulted ceiling used to be painted, and, even damaged and erased as it was, one could guess the outlines of the Ocean Plain, the blue faded to almost white and the green pale; the dark shapes of the Vaskian Mountains; the rectangle of the Patran Wall. The landscapes encircled another map of the night sky, and in the place of the two brother stars were the silhouettes of two men. Only their light hair remained. And, at the centre of the maps, a hole, a gape, with metal bars, and it was probably once a dome of glass.

“Why are we here?” asked Nikandros, ill-eased by the memory of a fallen city.

Laurent said, going for the throne, “I want to see what he has done to Veretians. If we found one.”

But when Pallas and Lazar returned from their patrol, their shook their heads. The ghost castle was empty, and silent.

 

It was a few instants after that the silence was broken.

It was faint and far away, little thuds resonating.

They waited for the steps to get closer, tense and ready to fight, but they were light and slightly uneven. It was not a warrior’ steps. Lowering their swords, they watched as a young boy entered the hall. He was probably looking for the food he left here, that Jord found rooting behind the old throne.

The stunning apparition, which looked like one, as the boy was as pretty as Laurent, stopped brutally upon seeing them.

It struck them, the resemblance belonging to the kind of beauty not made for this world: eyes as blue as the midday sky, skin as pale as the sea pearl, face with a symmetric aristocracy. The only difference was the mop of curly brown hair. One could wonder if he was also a young god, but he did not carry himself with the grace of hidden power – on the contrary, with the lightness of children who did not quite hit puberty. His eyes, where they were on the intruders, were as cold and sharp as a knife blade.

And then, a whisper, “Nicaise.”

The boy looked to the god he resembled so much, and paled. “Laurent?”

Laurent came closer, crouched in front of the boy, whose eyes were daggers still, even to a god.

Nicaise bit his lips, upset, before saying, “You came.”

Laurent nodded, “I told you I will.”

“You left me alone with him.”

“I left all of you.”

“I was alone. You left me, and then he left me behind, to rot there without food. What kind of god cannot save a single child?”

“Not a very good one. How did you convince him to let you live with your will and wits?”

“I think you know exactly how.”

Something passed between them, something like ugly understanding. The North Star was tense, straight and still, a statue made of ice; in front of him, a small flame somewhat embodied in a boy, dangerous, accusatory, furious; and yet, still, vulnerable.

And then Laurent was back, and, hushed, “I stopped hearing you after a certain time -”

“I stopped believing you would come, so praying was no use to me.”

He did not say: _I was afraid he would hear, I had nothing left to fear he did not already do_. In the dark, he grew too afraid to pray.

Laurent nodded, and said, “He won’t touch you anymore. No one will touch you against your will ever again.”

Nicaise’s face became an unattractive sneer, “It was my choice. Don’t lull yourself in illusions.”

Damen thought of that, for an instant, of a child left alone with a powerful being grasping the fate of one’s life in his hands, a child with no family or ways to feed himself, and wondered what kind of tricks he had accomplished to survive, and what happened that made him lose faith. He wondered, then he did not; horrible realization settling somewhere in his bones. He saw that Laurent was right, that in the face of survival, one hardly had a choice. He could almost see it, Nicaise living sickly next to the Regent – and, in disguise of sleeping, praying to another star.

Laurent said, “I’m here, now,” like a promise, an oath he had told again and again since Acquitart. Guilt, anger, determination; there was no doubt the North Star was to vanquish his enemy. In a maddening thought, Damen pictured the glory it would be, a star unleashing its powers.

Laurent standing tall and proud, swallowing everything around him, like a black hole.

Nicaise looked straight into the star’s eyes, his shoulders carrying the weight of someone else’s false promising, his mouth a hard line, determining whereas to believe him or not. Something changed then in him, his flame less burning but still bright, more embers – he wanted to believe the North Star.

“You bitch!” he cried, but threw himself in the awaiting arms nevertheless.

“I deserved that, I suppose.”

Jord look offended by the exchange but the North Star had a glint of amusement in his eyes, and hold the boy against him. Damen smiled, without realizing.

“Come,” Laurent said after a few seconds, getting up and extending a hand toward the boy, “You can tell me how you escaped a star, while I tell you how I came down. Damen, would you mind looking for Veretians?”

Nicaise scoffed, but took the hand proposed, and said, “You won’t find them, not at the surface.”

Laurent looked at him, “Where, then?”

The boy had the proud smile of a child knowing something adults did not, and said, “Follow me.”

They took another complicated path, down the south aisle of the castle, where objects were left on the floor, abandoned in haste.

“Why do you have a castle, if you have no king?” Asked Nikandros to Orlant.

“Just like Kingsmeet is the place for stars to descend in the Green Ocean, Arles is one for stars to reside in Vere. It was built to suit the North Star’s tastes, where Kingsmeet was the South Star’s.”

Damen looked ahead, but Laurent was talking with Nicaise, sometimes with a smile in his eyes, sometimes squeezing his hand tighter and bringing him closer. _I want to see what he has done to Veretians_ , he had said. Damen thought about his journey with him and that, maybe, the North Star just wanted to go home.

He thought prayers were a strange thing in this world; bringing closer men and stars.

 

Soon they got out on the other side of the castle, in the gardens. They stood on a terrace of marble benches and statues, great fountains no longer producing what was with no doubts complicated games of water. They were overhanging the complex layout of trees and flowers, a true labyrinth of frozen green. Laurent looked around, frowned and then looked at Nicaise again.

Pride has deserted the boy’s expression, traded for something more guarded, and he let go of the star’s hand to walk ahead, straight into the labyrinth. Branches weaved a dark green roof above them, casting them in another dimension of darkness. Turns blurred into one another, losing them at each step; again, and again. There was no telling where was North, or how much time had passed, but Nicaise guided them with the confidence of a man who had time to explore, get lost and learn; and, after a final turn, they finally reached their destination.

They were in a glade, oaks all around like guardians, and, on the ground, incongruously, orange and yellow lilies like a blanket of sunset, untouched by the cold.

Nicaise said, in lieu of explanation, “It was his favourite flowers.”

At the back of the glade, a caryatid trapped in mineral, guardian of cave, was the corpse of a young man. His lower half was trapped inside a rock big enough to obstruct the entry, and his hands also, leaving only his torso, arms and head visible. His skin was an immaculate canvas of white, slowing turning green; his arms raised on each side of his body, to make so his silhouette was a cross; his face obstructed by hair, for his head was hanging low in death. Insects were swarming on it, coming in and out by his ears and nostrils.

Despite all of this, the most striking figure was his hair, red, silky, longer than the size of a human, strands caught and pinned around him – a spiderweb of bloody red.

He was, despite everything, complementary to the flower and so, very beautiful.

The Veretians paled, Laurent gave place to the North Star, expressionless, aloof. It was Jord who whispered, “Ancel.”

They knew him. It was nauseating. The intent was not only to keep, but to hurt.

Orlant, his voice broken, asked, “Did he trap him alive in that?”

A display of such cruelty would have made lesser men sick and give up, but the North Star was no men and moved forward, placed a careful hand on the cheek of the dead, like a lover would, and lifted his face to look at him.

Even death could not hide how beautiful he was; and such beauty was now immortalized.

Nikandros stepped forward, “What are you -”

“Collection his last words,” said Laurent, closing his eyes.

He let go of Ancel then, stepped back, and lifted both hand in front of him. Focusing, he led the rock aside, opening the way inside the cave. It was almost amusing then, how the soft gasps of surprise came from the Veretians, how the Akielons on the other part were now used to this kind of small miracles.

Damen looked around and said, “We need a torch.”

“No need,” was the star’s answer, “Make a fire.”

It was Pallas who did so, and Laurent whistled softly when the fire was big enough. One by one, butterflies of fire detached themselves and flew into the cave. A hoard of them, flying around, lightening, warming, until all that remained of the fire were embers and burnt sticks.

Silent, and a little astonished, they penetrated the cave carefully, following the lead of the fire butterflies inside the dark corridor. The more they walked, the more prominent was a humming. They believed it to be the rustling of wind inside a conceited place, but they soon realized it was the echoes of a chorus of voices, murmuring incomprehensible things at the same time. Veretians.

Finally, they entered a large underground room and saw what was waiting for them. Children, men, women, elders, all roaming around aimlessly, their eyes feverish, looking into nothingness, their chapped mouths moving to the words of what they now heard to be endless prayers. They were swaying, with the frail frames and hollow faces of people deprived of food and water for too long; barely alive.

The butterflies unexpectedly burst into small fires cracking angrily all around the room; casting light and shadow on the ghostly faces they had come to deliver. Damen turned to look at Laurent and did not found him. The North Star was livid.

A rumble, like a faraway thunder, came out of the North Star, low and dangerous, “He buried them alive.”

It had been months since the last time Damen had trembled in the presence of the North Star. His eyes were suddenly dark holes menacing to swallow everything around them, his skin slithering from underneath.

“Get out,” said the thunder to them.

Nobody moved, perplex and afraid, until it came back stronger, from a place even deeper, “Get out!”

They obeyed, the ground trembling beneath their feet. A strange light came out from the inside of the cave, and with it, the end of the North Star’s hair, creeping on the ground like a lava of stars, galaxies, and nebula. They stared, frozen, until it retracted.

Nothing happened for a few seconds, then a shout pierced through the silence, and another.

The first waves of Veretians to come out was running, shouting, afraid and panicked. Huet, Lazar and Rochert tried to contain and calm them. The second one was haggard faces, blinded by the light that was slowly extinguishing inside, relieved to see healthy faces and then afraid to see Akielons. The Ios riders could only throw their swords to the ground, waiting for solace to find the Veretians, before helping them. The last wave was elders and children who needed help to walk, and Orlant and Jord rushed to help. They were roughly the number of a court that could be fitted in the palace of Arles; and it was too much for the glade. And finally, the North Star came out.

Silence fell upon the glade like a spell. Astonishment and reverence replaced panic and pain, and there was a single murmur, “North Star”, before with frantic abandonment, the Veretians got to their knees; a sea of bowed head in front of a young god.

“Rise, never kneel to me.”

It was Laurent again.

The Veretians got up again, and this time, in a salute Damen did not know, lifted their right hand to their left shoulder and bowed again, this time merely a movement of the head. The synchronicity of it all forced some admiration in the Ios warrior living into Damen, and Laurent answered by a nod and the faintest curl of lips.

When they looked up, their eyes were shining with a new light, the weakness of their bodies forgotten.

Orlant took the initiative, and said, “Let’s install everyone in what is left of the castle. They need to rest, to regain some strength. We can explain everything on the way back, and then decide.”

They got to work quickly, separating the people between groups: the hunting party, those who could help people heal and those who needed extra care, with the efficiency that reminded Damen of his tribe. Memory of home pushed the sentiment of longing to the surface, but it was more patient and less urgent, and Damen let it conquer his heart for once.

Only three people stayed, Laurent, Nicaise, and a man he did not know. He was tall and a little older than him, broad shouldered, with brown hair. He was looking at Ancel.

Damen gave back the little girl he had been carrying to her worried mother, and looked, a few feet away. They stood there, humans and stars alike, equals in the face of grief.

Laurent was looking at the man, the knowledge that some things would never heal in his eyes, and, softly, called out to him, “Berenger.”

Berenger turned to him, his cheeks hallow, his frame thinner than what it was meant to be, his lips chapped. Even worse were his eyes, shining with restrained tears. He looked at Laurent, not really processing who, or what, was standing before him. 

Laurend said, “His last thoughts were for you.”

Berenger nodded. Nicaise came closer to Laurent, the little will-o’-the-wisp brave in the front of the display of power he just witnessed, his unwavering faith in the star back and solid, and said, “We should bury him.”

His face was soothed into neutrality; he looked even more like Laurent like this. Laurent stepped forward and earth collapsed upon itself to make a hole in front of him. He cupped Ancel’s cheek again, and the rock keeping him prisoner crumbling into nothingness. The corpse was floating, the horror of its reality for everyone to see, but neither Nicaise nor Berenger looked away. It had suffered the fate of decomposition and where the upper part was green and eaten by insects, the lower part was blackened into mildew. Laurent deposed it slowly into the hole, and earth covered it at once. With a swift movement of his wrist, grass grew again.

Then, Laurent turned to Berenger and asked, “Is there anything you want on it?”

Without a word, Berenger put his hand in one of his pockets to reveal a hair pin. It was a long and thin pick of gold, and, at the end, a flower made of emeralds. It was so outrageous even Damen could decipher it from where he was. Berenger came to plant it on the tomb, an echoes of tombs Damen had seen on the way, in the Acquitart forest, in the cold plains of Vere: mount of dirt with swords planted in it. Laurent passed his hand on it and all the flowers around disappeared, the broach becoming one enormous lily, its stem and leaves golden, its petal the bright green of the emerald stone. It shone under the branches roof like a small sun, planted on earth.

Laurent got up then, Berenger bowed to him in the Veretian style and left, passing next to Damen with his head bowed.

Nicaise took Laurent’s hand again, this time without waiting for the invitation and led him away from the tomb. Laurent looked at Damen only once when he started walking with them. Whatever expression of sadness he might or might not had was now gone, leaving his usual aloof resolve instead. Yet Damen found something changed and stole glances all the way back, wondering.

It was only later, when the snow started falling again, finding its way through the ruined roof, when fires where lit inside to warm the food and the bodies, when he was seated next to Nikandros looking forward to a night of sleep, his mind preoccupied, that he understood.

His eyes went to find Laurent immediately. The god was still up, talking to some Veretians and Nicaise, their precious source of information, planning the liberation of all others Veretians buried alive to pray. He was standing in the hall that once held his throne, which was now as abandoned as the rest of it, and yet shone softly in white, like a beacon in the middle of falling darkness.

With some of the Veretians back and the star admits of them, faith grew stronger, thoroughly and surely.

The North Star was regaining the full capacity of his powers.

 

Damen found Laurent again in the early hours of the morning; leaning against an archway and looking at the sunrise. Snow had settled, making everything a sea of white. When Damen came to stand next to him, Laurent said, “They are going to travel in small groups to find the Veretians trapped in the country. Nicaise said to look for a hidden cave at the entry of every village.”

Damen nodded, “Take use of the propagation; then when a group is freed, they go free more groups that will do the same.”

“Yes. Nicaise is going to stay here. I can’t have him falling in the Regent’s hands again.”

“You like him.”

Laurent had nothing to say to that, and turned his eyes to look at him. Damen looked back, not nervous nor uncomfortable, happy to lose himself in blond hair, in the corner of an immaculate skin. And he wanted, with a force that he did not foresee, something he thought he could not have; the mistakes made loving too much. He wanted to find Pallas and Nikandros and say, _Let them have Ios, let us stay_.

He forced his mind to go back to Laurent and Nicaise, and with a foolish sparkle of hope, asked, “Will you stay, for him?”

“There is no easy answer to that.”

Damen could have added: _And for me?_

But for Laurent showed for Nicaise the kind of fondness brothers showed to each other, his mind was suddenly back on the loss of his father, and, in a sense, brother. Something must have changed in his expression, or one might call a star’ supernatural instinct, as a hand came resting on his shoulder. He leaned into it, automatically.

“You would not have liked my father. He did not believe in stars.”

“Few Akielons,” said Laurent, coming closer, “do.”

“He ought to stop your kin. He sent me to Acquitart, where I killed -”

“No,” interrupted Laurent quickly. “We do not have to do this. We both know the hardships of losing a family: there is not enough of a lifetime to mourn for it. Nothing matters next to it.”

“I took Auguste from you,” said Damen, finality in his tone, "I gave you an eternity of grief." 

“You keep saying that. And I keep saying,” Laurent was talking slowly, as if each word was costing him, “You paid the price for it already.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.” Solemn.

A place at the back of his mind would be forever dark for Auguste’s killing, as a star leave only explosion and dark nothingness in its death. Next to it his family was a huge, rotting place, something he had not allow himself to linger on, and, yet, like so often the past months, in the presence of Laurent, he talked.

“I always thought I would not have any child. I took precautions to not let him happen.”

The hand crawled up until it was carefully passing through the curls at his neck.

“I always thought -” he stopped, swallowing hard, “I never told anyone. I always thought I had killed too many fathers and mothers, too many daughters and sons, to have some of my own.”

The hand was starting to become distracting.

“I just occurred to me that, maybe, I should have talked to my father about it.”

The hand pushed him forwards, forcing him to turn, and another came to rest next to its twin, so that he was in Laurent’s embrace. He closed his eyes and put his cheek on fair soft hair, his hands carefully coming to rest on the smaller waist. Damen almost retracted when he felt Laurent tense, but then he relaxed again; and Damen allowed himself a few minutes of solace.

Hurt was always going to be between them. Damen’s back. Auguste. It bounded them together in a way prayers could not; a more human bound. _You paid the price already,_ Laurent had said: the truth was there, a hard price which did not feel harsh enough, forever marked on Damen’s back – and in his memory. But it was not a question of price, not really, not any more, not ever. They had had a lot to forgive and learn from each other and, unexpectedly, they did.

“It was not fair,” Damen pushed the words out of him, “to you.”

“Life is not fair. It is not fair what happens to the Veretians.”

Damen could have said: _It_ _is not fair, what my brother did._

It was Laurent who voiced it, “It is not fair, what your brother did to you.”

It was the first time he talked about his father’s loss, and the first he really thought of Kastor. It was almost a relief, to not forgive a brother’s treatise. It did not lift the pain, only the complicated and paradoxical feeling of not knowing how to act in the face of it.

“Will you hear a secret?”

With this enigmatic question, Laurent slowly broke the embrace, staying close enough that they could feel the other’s breath, and letting his hands stay where they were.

“It was not Auguste who wanted to descend and meet the humans. It was me. I spent centuries pestering him about it.”

It was such a lovely though.

Entertained, Damen asked, “Did we meet your expectations, North Star?”

“No. Every one of you was so much more.”

“Really?” Pleased.

“Yes. I don’t understand why humans worship us, when they have the kind fit to be rulers and kings.”

“What kind is it?”

“Yours.”

Damen met the steady gaze of Laurent, and made the unconscious gesture of tightening his grip. The touch on his neck was constant and light, and it was slowly driving him insane.

“I’ll make you king, Damianos.”

Something changed inside him, replacing doubt with certainty, giving strength and resolve; shifting the world a little, putting it in the right axle.

Such was the power of the North Star.

Duty crashed with personal affection and lost once again. Damen restrained himself from coming back into the embrace, in an effort that engaged all of his muscles, and a lot of conviction. Laurent seemed to sense it, as his lips curled in the faintest of smile, barely the ghost of it, and said, “For all your courage, you are quite a coward when it comes to me, Damianos of Akielos.”

He wanted to answer how no mortal could ever respond to a star wishing a crown on their head, when Laurent used the hands he still had on his neck to bring him forward. He stopped just a breath away from Damen’s mouth and, after a second of entertaining hesitation, kissed him.

Damen had expected the tension, but not how quickly it disappeared, Laurent relaxing his entire being and losing himself in the kiss. He let Damen lead, his inexperience slipping away behind closing eyes.

The push of lips was firm and insistent, and then Laurent opened his mouth in a shuddering breath, and Damen was helplessly laid open by the successive kisses.

Then, Laurent backed, and whispered, eerily, “I’ve always felt guilty about insisting on descending. My brother would not had to suffer such trials if I had not. He would not have loved and lost Amarilla”

Damen brought his hands higher on his back, slowly, and leaned down to press a quick kiss of comfort of Laurent’s mouth, who kept on, “Something always held us back to the sky, before. But not anymore. There’s nothing left waiting for me up there, and yet, it’s not that simple.”

Damen lifted his hands to his jaws, thumbing softly his cheeks, and this time it was Laurent who leant up for a kiss. When he opened his eyes again, there was an emotion Damen could not name in it, and he said, “I never understood my brother this much.”

Damen felt his heartbeat like never before, and then, helplessly, hastily, came his answer, “I never loved anyone this much.”

The next kiss happened because it felt inevitable, and with a certain urgency.

 

And then, an intrusion.

Damen found himself a few feet away from Laurent without having to move; he flickered a quick look at him. Laurent’s breath was a little shallow, his hair a little out of place. Damen smiled, and turned his attention to the intruders. It was two Veretians, out of breath, and one of them was Jord.

“South, the lake -” said the other Veretians, panting.

“Across the lake, North Star, the Regent – He’s-” Jord panted, “– He’s here.”

They rushed to the horses, and then, down Arles, to the lake. The closer they were, the quieter was the landscape; birds stopped humming, wind stopped ruffling. Horses grew scared and restless and they barely managed to control them until they reached the lake.

The lake of Arles was a corpse.

Large enough to sail upon, frozen to the core and as quiet as a heart gone still, the lake spread at their feet like a rigid and cold body of death. They approached it with caution, leaving their worried mounts behind. Across the frozen water, people were waiting for them, their silhouettes no more than blurry points. Damen knew at once and bitterly the set of his brother’ shoulders, the shape of his beard, the colours of his skin. Some of Ios riders were around him. Needles picked at his heart, almost making loose sense of reality. Nikandros came to stand proud and unwavering next to him.

They felt a quivering of powerful energy next to them, and looked to find the North Star still and aloof in expression, but with skin moving from underneath. It provoked something akin to a rush of fear in them, followed by easiness.

For minutes that felt like eternity, nobody moved. Then, feet sliding on the ice, a young man stepping into war, driven and seeking denouement. It was the North Star, whom blended as always with the white of Veretians lands, the only stain of colours the rich and intense blue of his eyes. He looked ahead, and spoke: “Leave the humans out of it.”

He used the even tone that was specific of him, but his voice travelled across the lake and reached every entity around; humans, trees, every snowflake. His fury could be felt by all.

In front of them, Ios riders parted and let another man came forward, mirroring the posture of the North Star. It was a man of middle age, dark haired and flooding with powers. Another star, calm, waiting. Damen regretted the time when stars were rarely seen, for the vision of this one bought heaviness to his heart, seeding it with the purest expression of hate.

The Regent answered in kind, “Little Laurent. I reckon it is time you stop pretending to have any inclination towards them. You flagellated one of them. You abandoned them. Such inconsistency and foolishness are not fit of a star – you bear shame to what we are.”

“Yes, clearly I have mistreated humans so much. I’m sure slavery and manipulation are more fit. Do your news soldiers know what you did to their precedent chief, and to Veretians?”

They saw the impact of Laurent’s words on the Akielons, the way they looked at each other, how they swayed a little on their feet, breaking the military discipline. The Regent smiled, the perfect image of sincerity, and said, “There was no such thing. I am desolated to see your lies have no limits. Veretians chose to pray for me in anguish, because you abandoned them.”

“I must be very good, then, for them to accept me again. Or them very gullible.”

It was Kastor who answered, shouting against the distance, “How dare you, you who cursed my father, reduced my brother!”

Damen welcomed anger like the old friend it now was, and shouted back, “There was no such thing, and you know it!”

“You let our father die, killed him by following another! Who is he, for you to abandon your kin like that?”

The North Star thundered, his fury cold and biting as a whip, “Who I am? I am the North Star, Laurent of Vere, and I won’t let anyone threaten them anymore.”

The North Star had finally found home again. 

However little hesitation remaining disappeared, and they stood behind him, an army backing its king.

“I am afraid the North Star’s hold on them is too strong. The only outcome is now quite harsh, by your fault, Little Laurent.”

Damen drew his sword, soon imitated by every warrior on both sides. Only Huet took out his bow. Nikandros frowned and said, “They’re out of range.”

Laurent came closer to him as Huet smirked in Nikandros’ direction, and lifted a hand to tear a single hair, transparent between delicate fingers. He gave it to Huet, and as soon as it touched the soldier finger, the hair transformed itself into a black and thick arrow, that Huet shoot. It flew with great speed across the lake, piercing the air and silence, and landed in the torso of one of the Ios riders, who fell on the snow, painting it red.

They launched on the ice, the same war cry resonating from both sides; Veretians whistling underneath. The ferocity of the battle was such that Damen was back six years ago and, with the strength of desperation, kept an eye on his brother who was fighting in an onward escape, toward the peripheries of the lake.

 

Laurent advanced calmly on the frozen surface, meeting the other star at the centre like two meteorites ready to collide. They were both untouched by the battle, the two stars fighting their own private war in the middle of humans, no smudge of blood coming to disturb their perfect faces, no lost weapons reaching them – the battle parted before them like a sea.

“Stop this nonsense, Little Laurent, before having the death of those humans on your conscience as well,” commanded the Regent.

Laurent answered by a swift gesture of wrist, trembling with fury, and the Regent braced himself for the attack, that never came. He had used his powers to enforce his warriors, giving them both speed and strength. Damen was fraying his way in the scrimmage of bodies toward his brother, who was still running away. People parted from him, from the mountain of death he was creating in his wake. Blood melted with dirt, covering the lake of Arles and making it a butchered corpse.

 

And, away from it, out in the outer space, the battle was happening also, in a way humans could not fully comprehend. Laurent took a second to adjust himself back to the surroundings of divine essence. An aurora arboreal was waiting for him there – its colour unexpectedly blue; its path ascending, welcoming and familiar. He took a first step on it and let himself be carried home.

Stars were waiting for them, some of them careful and curious, some disapproving and begrudgingly still eager. A confrontation between two of their kind was so seldom even immortal beings did not remember the last time it happened.

Laurent felt the first raw wave of pure essence come for him, clashing strongly with one of his own. Stars collided. The back and forth made the universe move to make place for the fight, lingering around in an arena of stars. The purest of powers, born from their very cores, accumulated to reach, wound, flee; echoing through every particle existing before imploding – planets retreated in fear. Laurent knew that mass of unstable matter, that cluster of pureness; his brother and him were born from it. It was smaller then, born from their parents’ dance, but so very much the same. A nebula was born from the battle.

 

Distracted by it, he felt the complacent from the Regent before feeling his essence freeze, his mind crashing back down on the frozen lake at once. Panic crept on his soul with sharp cold claws. The Regent smiled at him, condescend and victorious, and Laurent looked down at his tight, at the glittering dark arrow lodged in it. He could not know who drew it, and it did not matter. It was made from the repulsing substance of the Regent’s core and he did not register before, up above, it when it had found home in his skin, so the poison had time to climb up until it reached the nucleus of his being; and the North Star was fully frozen.

 

He fought and resisted and fought again; and lost. His breath became laboured and painful, all his muscles sore and his brain torn apart by affliction and panic. It was distressing and reducing; it made him feel vulnerable and out of his skin – and so human. The thought of death came to his mind for the first time since the creation of everything, and it was not as frightening as he thought it would be.

A movement on his right distracted his train of thoughts, and a sword, dirty and bloody came to strike the Regent. It was Lazar. When his sword passed through the other star without wounding, he tried again, but a human could not hurt a star if the god did not allow him to, and all his efforts were vain. Laurent tried to find his voice to scream at him to run, but only the taste of blood and bill came out of his throat; and pain came back suddenly, a lash of fire and acid on every bone.

But he should have known his men better, the resilience with which they lived, and fought.

Lazar was faster than what the scornful mind of the Regent could envision and knew it. He tried to be faster and faster, not caring about defence when the star did not disdain to strike back. And then, a second of sheer luck, a small mistake of a star, and blood stained the Regent’s face for the first time ever. It was a shallow and thin cut on his left cheek, and he put a hand on it before gazing at the black blood with something like dismay and worry. For Laurent who had been in a human body so many times before, a small wound as such would not make him halt, but it was the first time for the Regent and Laurent saw, powerless, the moment it disintegrated what little patience he has for the Veretian before.

His pause had made Lazar stop too, his warriors’ instincts waiting and bracing. The Regent left a hand and with a delicate gesture that mirrored the one Laurent made so often, stopped Lazar’s heart. His body fell on the ice with almost no sound, and the absence of blood in the middle of such battle made Laurent hesitate before he comprehended. At the back of his mind, a laugh echoed, piercing through pain and panic – it was Lazar’s.

 

And Laurent wanted, with a ferocity he should not be surprised by after all this time, to destroy and _annihilate_.

 

His essence boiled from deep inside and overflowed. The Regent’s hold on him came undone at once in an explosion that sent a wave of raw power on the lake. The battle stopped. Humans looked at them. Damen, from where he was on the bank, looked and breathed in bewilderment. _It was happening_. The North Star let all his powers engulf his body and the space around.

Damen turned his back to him to find his brother far away, climbing up to the palace. He was not afraid for Laurent; if he was being honest, he was afraid of him. The North Star at this moment reeked of danger for miles around.

Today a star was about to fall.

 

Laurent rushed the Regent back in space. Ferociously, he clawed through his core, tearing it apart in millions of pieces and planted the seed of devastation in what was left. He watched, relieved and satisfied, as the Regent crumbled to dust, the silent cry of agony making his heart pound with vicious joy. When it was over, what little left of his enemy drifted into space, lost forever and so weak it disappeared almost immediately. Other stars made way for him, afraid and impressed, and he descended back on earth, the aurora arboreal curling around him, a sphere of powers and space, cold and icy, in perfect fusion with the North Star.

 

The battle had stopped on the lake. Warriors left frozen mid swings, eyes wide on the North Star and the place where the Regent used to be, now empty but for the incongruous sense of defeat and destruction. Without moving, Laurent let his voice find Damen, curling into his ears like a lover, and said “Go. Find your brother. Put an end to it.”

And Damen went.

 

Laurent took two steps and crouched by Lazar’s corpse, putting his hand on his, unable to register the cold of it, his own temperature always lower than the human norm. He wanted to grieve, but that would come later. He made the instant oath to remember Lazar for the rest of his eternity.

Then, a rustle of clothes, a sword trembling into frightened hands, and one of Kastor' soldiers came to bravely face a star, like a mouse in front of the dragon, “Monster! You only bought death and treatise! I won’t let you take Damianos again.”

 _Some monsters are painfully aware of what they are_ , thought Laurent, _hence I am_. He would deal with the manipulation and mind control later, for now only fear and powers would stop them. He rose again, empowered by his victory against the Regent, let his true form take over, and glared down the Akielons soldier.

 

“You won’t. I’ll take your heart as an offering to him.”

 

*

 

The corridor was a pool of blood.

Laurent advanced carefully, finally finding what he was looking for. He stopped before the spectacle awaiting him, two bodies lying on the floor next to their swords, two lion furs red and wet discarded not far away. For a painful moment, he thought Damen dead. He stopped breathing, but had never really needed to. It was at once Lazar’s corpse on the ice, and his brother falling and vanishing on earth.

He rushed by Damen’ side, and let himself fall into his blood. A heartbeat. Small, fluttering like a butterfly, a resurgence of energy before the end. He remembered the human way of breathing, and thought about a way to heal. He tried to put a hand on the wound and apply pressure, but Damen had lost too much blood already. Healing and helping has never been his forte, but the South Star’s, and he was beyond exhausted by his previous confrontation with the Regent. He reckoned it was probably the end.

 

Kastor was dead. Damen, almost.

 

He recognized Damen’s lion fur was a few feet away on the floor and gazed at it, processing with a careful and cultivated distance Damen's almost non-existent breath, his face paling, his body colder and colder. But he knew. Laurent knew too well. Humans die. He had watched, a long time from ago, the ever fierce Amarilla die. He had been, at the time, experimenting for the first time the strange power of sadness. And, in the mysterious land of tears, he had worried about losing his brother.

He had, in a sense. He had spent centuries taking care of his brother, consumed by grief. And then Auguste, ever the strongest, ever the protector, ever the guide, moved on and kept on watching the humans, but never forgot his only love.

Humans made gods feel. Such a strange power they did not know they had.

And, looking back at the struggling form of Damen, Laurent never missed his brother this much.

There was a time, between two galaxies, when his brother had whispered to him that after Amarilla, he only wanted to live because he wanted to spend as much time as possible with Laurent. They had eternity then, and loved each other more than anything. But eternity was the only thing Laurent still had now, his brother gone, Damen almost. He wanted to destroy the universe. He wanted to die. He wanted to pray. Feeling so human did not bring him any solace, and he almost wished they never took interest in them in the first place.

He thought about the Regent reduced to dust, drifting forever in the nothingness of space, and made his decision. He stood up and went to the closest window, kneeling before it. Above him, through the small opening, he could see what was not his home any more – a dark sky full of stars, the house of gods. He mirrored Damen’s position when he had called for Laurent, kneeling in front of the maps of star. And the North Star prayed.

“Let him live, brothers and sisters. Let him live, and I will make sure his name will be attached to the memory of greatness. I will make him king. I already did. Take what is needed instead.”

He knew the scale of what he was asking, he had been a god too – and no god ever asked that before, not even Auguste. More than thousands responded to him, more than he could count, shining brighter in the sky, pouring their non-material answer into him. He felt light-headed but so, so hopeful.

 

The North Star held his breath – and with him, the whole universe held his breath too. Together, they waited.

 

And he lived.

Damen lived.

 

*

 

Riding back into Kingsmeet felt like a homecoming Damen had longed for, but not quite deserved.

They had sent a rider ahead to warn the Ios tribe of their arrival, and for the twin ceremony of enthroning Damen as chief and burying his father and brother. As soon as they set foot in the camp down Kingsmeet, they had been informed that Jokaste, her horse and her child had been missing for a while, but Damen was not worried about her own survival and bid her farewell in the silence of his mind.

The journey back had been long but peaceful, between Akielons and a few chosen Veretians, tending to their wounded, learning to know each other and the land. Jord had told him gravely what had insured his survival, and had assured the presence of Veretians at his return home, as proof and hope for improving relationships.

The only thing which had darkened the travel was the absence of the North Star.

Laurent had been missing since he saved his life, and Damen missed him dearly. Only the beauty of Kingsmeet had distracted his thoughts from where they lingered, and preparing the ceremonies. Jord, Orlant, Huet, Nicaise and a woman named Vannes took joy in discovering another culture; even with mourning their own loss. Pallas still cried the loss of Lazar and what they almost had; Berenger had not outlived his love. He had died with Ancel. It took them only a few days to conquer the heart of the wild southern riders. Damen had noticed some of them wearing the distinct Veretian paints on their faces. Hope was a welcomed feeling.

 

“My friend,” said Nikandros, entering his hut, “are you ready?”

Damen turned, his lion fur on his shoulders, his father’s sword at his hips, the North Star’s trust in his heart, and said, “Yes.”

Nikandros smiled, an easy smile full of familiarity and memories and clasped his forearm. They stayed like this a while, the two who were brothers in everything but blood; and went out. In passing, Nikandros put his hand on the wooden altar, a tribute, before following his friend and chief up Kingsmeet.

People were banging sword on shields as Damen ascended, and Nikandros came to stop with the Veretians and Pallas at the entry. Damen had to go alone to accomplish the ritual before stepping out as chief. They smiled at him, proud and sure, and Damen, enthralled, noticed the contour of the red lion Veretians had painted on their cheeks in addition to their usual symbols. It was a resplendent day.

He climbed up the last steps alone and entered the sacred place. On each side of the entry were the corpses of his family, still in the process of embalming. The burial was planned in three days, after the extinguishment of the last of the incenses as per their ancestral traditions. Incenses gave by their scent and smoke an eerie guise to the statue of his father and brother; and some had protested his choices. Damen had insisted on honouring his brother like he wanted to, despite everything, with both the burial and a statue fit for every chief. He did not know himself strong enough to bear such an adieu, and tried to not think about the pale hand who could help him live through this trial.

His first step resonated through the Great Hall, but it was no longer the solitaire tear of a star – but the first drop of the rain cleaning years of unnecessary war.

He crossed the hall, and knelt in front of the great Amarilla statue. Next to him, a tripod had been bought, and inside was burning the grass upon which he was born, kept for what was seen as the most important moment of his life. On impulse, he put a hand on Amarilla’s feet, a salutation to his ancestor.

He began the usual ritual, “I will protect your legacy, ride with all the tribes, wear the lion pride wherever I go. I will do more, arrogant as it may be, because I will, O Amarilla, bring back the stars into our life.”

He looked up, and his imagination thought her white smile suddenly sadder.

“I have seen them. I have killed one of them and faced the other knowing what I have done. He chose to let me live by respect for you, and I have learned his ways slowly. I have seen his powers and heart; which belonged to the Veretians from the beginning but allowed me and my people to take some place. I am honoured to have been by his side, as, I am sure, you were.”

The stone under his palms was cold. He bought its twin to rest next to it, and added, “I wish you could talk, to tell me how he was when you knew him. How Auguste was. I think I need someone to teach me how to live with all the love I have for him.”

He rose, lifting his hands. His heart was trying to not crumble under the weight of the immortal barrier between him and Laurent. He had come to his decision a long time ago, at Arles; he would persist in his inclination. The choice was not in his hands anymore. Maybe the North Star’s absence was his response.

Outside, the noise of his people gave him strength; they were waiting for him. He would mourn love and family, and move on. He put out the flames in the tripod carefully, and took the mirror lying next to it. Using the ashes, he traced the outline of a lion on his forehead, and, diverting from traditions, framed it with two stars on each side. The Brothers Stars.

It felt like when the North Star had healed his back on the very same floor, deciding of his fate – a rebirth. Again. Damen was a man lucky enough to be born multiple times.

When he left the place of his ancestors behind, the crowd cheered, exclaiming its new chief, and he passed his eyes on the people he was nothing without until he found his oldest friend. Nikandros could burst from joy, and next to him, the Veretians saluted him in their customary way, even Nicaise. Honoured, he put his own hand on his shoulder, and gave the salute back.

His eyes went back to the crowd, and found, at the feet of the hill, between the crowd of people and the camp, a silhouette with blond hair. His heart skipped a beat, then two, then exploded. He rushed down the hill without caring for confirmation, ignoring the astounded whispers; rushed to meet the one who was waiting for him. The crowd knew at once who it was, as tales travelled faster than horses, and parted for Damen.

 

Laurent was smiling at him.

Something had changed in him; his hair unusually longer and messy, his ethereal white skin flushed, his eyes still the surreal blue holding all the faces of the sky. He let Damen come to him, waiting and looking.

When he finally, finally, reached him, Damen embraced him fiercely and ecstatic. He heard the breathy laugh Laurent pressed against his collarbone; and, behind them, the hurried steps of their friends running to meet him too. When he released him, Laurent’s eyes were bright with a joy that transformed his whole face, and said, “You are the strangest of all of them, Damianos of Akielos. You have such a power without knowing it: killing a star, making another one feel so much.”

His blushed deepened at the confession and Damen grinned more. He leaned down to kiss him. Then, softly, more intimate, bringing his hands on Damen’s jaw, Laurent said, “I gave it up. Immortality, powers, the sky – I gave up everything. I want to be here, to do right by you, by them.”

And he was looking above Damen’ shoulders, to the ones he had wished to know for so long.

He let him go then, and Laurent came to stand in front of them. Nicaise jumped into his arms and Laurent told them, “More Veretians are coming. They are almost all free, but Vere need rebuilding.”

Jord welcomed him back with a blinding smile, and said, “You are the best king we could ever ask for.”

Laurent frowned, and stated, “I am no king, barely a star anymore.”

The answer came muffled in blue silk, from the changing voice of Nicaise, “You don’t know how much you are.”

Eyes wide, the North Star smiled again, except the North Star was gone. Only Laurent remained.

  



End file.
